Caleb's Diary
by Often Partisan
Summary: Set post-Allegiant (so spoilers). Caleb writes a diary of all the things he should say to Tris.
1. 4 Hours 2 Days 4 Days 5 Days

**NB: Any dialogue from Tris that there is in this fic is taken directly from the book (****_Allegiant_****) hardback, pp. 455-6.**

**4 hours.**

Tris,

I guess I should call you Tris. Even though you've been Beatrice my whole life.

I really thought you were going to walk out of there, until I heard the gun go off. You see, I watched you battle through that serum that I know I never would have survived. You made it in, not dead. I believed you capable of anything in that moment. But then I heard the shots and saw your gun on the floor, so I knew there was no way it was you shooting.

I stood there and I waited, sick rising up my throat. I tell myself _you're just wounded_, that you'll get out of this because I know that you have always got out of this, you've always got out of everything, that's one of the reasons you'd become so unrecognisable to me.

When the death serum dispersed enough to get you out of there, they carried you out and put your blood-stained body on one of their slabs. I stood over you, looked at you. Despite it all you almost looked at peace. I felt the urge to run, get away, just to not have to look anymore at what you've done.

I'm not going back. I can't see you again.

**2 Days.**

Tris,

I know how much you hate me. Perhaps the hatred has always been there, since the moment I chose Erudite. That moment rent us for ever, even though they say the factions don't matter now. It's so pointless, isn't it? We hated each other over a dead system, and now I don't have any family left.

I'm empty, Tris. And despite everything, I miss you like hell.

**4 Days.**

Tris,

Finally the tears stream down my face. I'm having to fight them back right now.

Both of us remember when we were kids, right? When we both did things together in Abnegation, such as help our mom with sorting out the food for the Factionless. I used to help you along and you used to smile and try and get on with it the best you could. I know why you left; you always felt you didn't belong there. I know that, I could tell. But despite that there was so much we did in Abnegation together: we went to school, helped cook, clean and maybe even got a few snatched moments away from the cloistered nature of it all.

Perhaps that's why I left Abnegation, because despite all this, we never really knew each other.

**5 Days.**

Tris,

You were always the true Abnegation. I was just a better liar.


	2. 7 Days 9 Days 12 Days 16 Days

**7 Days.**

Tris,

Your name is everywhere. It has been for the past week. Everyone is talking about how you saved everything. I've tried to avoid everyone as much as possible, especially Tobias. I can't bear to look him in the eye, especially as I know with every moment that he's wishing that I'd have been the one to walk through that door. I know I need to tell him what you said to me. But right now I can't face him. I know it's pathetic that I owe such a small thing and can't even manage that.

**9 Days.**

Tris,

I still hear your voice in my head, over and over.

_Caleb, give me the backpack. Give me the backpack or I'll shoot you in the leg and take it from you._

What goes through my mind when you tell me that? I'll tell you, Tris: a barrage of conflicting thoughts. I don't want to feel pain; I don't want you to shoot me; I don't want you to take it from me; the belief that I need my redemption; the first little bit of doubt that I can actually do this; my history, a long line of cowardice; the belief that maybe you're just superhuman and that's why you're still alive; the idea that if you did it, you would make it.

I don't exactly know which thought it was that made me hand over the backpack. I like to think it wasn't my own weakness, but my belief in you.

**12 Days.**

Tris,

I finally got up the courage to speak to him today. Tobias.

To tell him what you told me: _that you didn't want to leave him_. I could see from the way he looked at me how angry he was, the look of contempt on his face. I don't blame him for that. I deserve every little bit of hatred that Tobias has for me.

Now I have paid off the only thing that you asked of me, the tiniest thing compared to what you did instead of me. It doesn't make me feel any better. I don't owe you _any_thing, but I owe you _every_thing.

**16 Days.**

Tris,

I don't write the dates. I mark time I don't deserve.


	3. 25 Days - 2 months 5 days

**25 Days.**

Tris,

_Damn you_, what have you done?

You _stole it_ from me, Tris. I know that you wanted to live.

You _knew_ that I didn't, not really, after all the things that I'd done. And yet you kill yourself over me? And yet you do _this_ to me? What this all some kind of sick game to you, Tris? As to which one of you, my mother, my father, or _you_ could be the most _bloody self-righteous_? So that despite you being just as much of a _traitor_ as I, you can prove that you're the _best damn Abnegation_ after all? Or was it your own guilt, Tris, at their deaths for you? Was that what you were looking to escape, erase the debt by some _exchange _for _my_ pathetic life?

You got what you want Tris. You're the _perfect martyr_ now, your name etched in our histories. You're there with all our dead ancestors, the greatest one of them all.

**1 month, 5 days.**

Tris,

Forget what I said.

It's my fault. It's always been my fault.

I'm a coward, that's all I am. I should never have given you my burden.

I was _supposed_ to do it, Tris. The truth is I was ready. I'd braced myself for death, knowing it was the only way to achieve my redemption and your forgiveness. It would have been worth it for that.

You weren't ready, were you? Like _hell_ you were, like _hell_, even after everything at the Erudite compound. You did not want to die, I did. But I can never die now, not until it's my time naturally. My redemption can never be achieved.

I honestly wonder whether what you've given me is a blessing or a curse.

**1 month, 17 days.**

Tris,

I hope it's true what you said when you told me you really want to forgive me.

**2 months, 5 days.**

Tris,

I tell myself that I wouldn't have been able to deal with David's gun. I would have panicked, forgotten the pass code, ended up dead anyway – and the people of the city would have ended up losing everything. I tell myself it's _for the best_ that it was you.

I could have never been in Candor.


	4. 3 months 27 days - 1 year

**3 months, 27 days.**

Tris,

You never understood me, did you? By that I mean Erudite, and I guess in our would that was everything. You didn't get that just because they said some bad things about Abnegation and their leaders, it didn't mean the whole faction was corrupt. The ideals of Erudite – the focus on expanding human knowledge and the sciences – were always noble, and I stand by that view of the faction. Even though I accept I was wrong about Jeanine now, and I regret what I did to help her, in the end she was the one who was betraying the Erudite values by hiding from the truth.

I guess the question you've always wanted to know the answer to is 'why did I help Jeanine?' I know it's pointless to rationalise myself to you now, to come up with some pathetic excuse as to why I did what I did. But I think you should know anyway. I guess I'd always believed faction before blood, and I was blinded by the noble ideas of the Erudite faction. But there was more to it than that. I really believed in Jeanine, that she was right, and that it getting out would destroy everything. I'd always admired Jeanine, despite my father's words, perhaps because of them. And when Jeanine spoke to me, I always believed that she had a plan for me, that I would be able to do great things because of her. She had that kind of pull that is difficult to explain, especially to someone who has always seen Erudite as evil.

In one respect, it seems like it's all nothing, irrelevant and stupid now that the factions no longer exist. But it was my _identity_, Tris, everything that I stood for, my ideals, my friends, my_faction_, my _faction before blood._

I've found a new way to be faithful to Erudite values in this world. I'm going to work for knowledge that can make this place better, really and truly, even if it can never undo my wrongs.

**4 months, 1 day.**

Tris,

I look back at all my memories of you again, just like I have been doing over the past 4 months. I realise: most of those memories are lies, aren't they? The memories of the quiet Abnegation Beatrice aren't real, because your selflessness doesn't belong in that Abnegation box. Tobias and Christina: it's them that have the true memories of you.

**6 months, 10 days.**

Tris,

I see him again. Tobias.

I tell him to hit me. I want him to smack me right in the face for being such a coward, for letting you die.

Instead he stands there across from me, looking defeated, his muscular body somehow managing to look fragile, his eyes empty. He doesn't say anything. I watch his right hand ball into a fist, and his right arm shake.

I think that I will get what I want.

Instead, he turns and walks away, shoulders slumped.

**9 months, 0 days.**

Tris,

I know my parents always said that they loved us both when we were growing up. That we were both equal in their eyes. I don't believe that, not for a moment. I know that you were the one that they really cared about, brave Tris over coward Caleb, abnegation Beatrice over _erudite_ Caleb. I know with every fibre of my being that my mother, my father would have wanted me to walk through that door instead of you. I _hate_ that, the fact that you are always better than me and I can never live up to that, not now that you're _dead_, not only dead but a _martyr_, the _greatest dead of all_.

**9 months, 1 day.**

Tris,

I'm sorry. It isn't about me.

**1 year, 0 days, 0 months, 0 hours.**

Tris,

I remember.


	5. 1 year 5 months - 5 years 2 months

**1 year, 5 months.**

Tris,

I know it should have been different. I still can't stop playing it in my head over and over again. The memory sticks out, bright against a sea of blur.

_Caleb, give me the backpack. Give me the backpack or I'll shoot you in the leg and take it from you._

I try to fix it. I try to fix the memory in my head, so it says what I want it to, so that you know what I want, what I must have.

Tris, I have to do this. I have to achieve my redemption._You nod your head at me and then fire, quickly, not at me, but at the soldiers in front of us. I move, almost as if I've been trained, almost as if I'm _you_. I set the bomb and it's easy, my Erudite nature kicking in. It explodes and then I steel myself for the onslaught. As I walk through the serum as fast as I can, reciting the code in my head, I hear a voice from behind me. _Caleb, I love you. _I enter the room, and he's waiting for me: David. It doesn't matter if he shoots. I slam the code into the keypad, hit the button as everything seems to explode around me, and then allow myself to collapse on the floor, my purpose achieved, not even knowing or caring which of the two things actually killed me._

In my fixed memory, you're not _you_, because I know you never would have given in like that. You really would have shot me rather than let me die.

**1 year, 8 months.**

Tris,

I'm still guilty. It worms through me, destroying everything.

**2 years, 1 month.**

Tris,

I thought you might want to know what Tobias has been doing. He's trying to get into politics. He works for Johanna as one of her assistants now. He wants to become a politician in his own right, someone who will work to change the legislation of this world to make it fairer for everyone. I think that's what you would have wanted.

I think he's changed, even though I barely see him.

**2 years, 6 months.**

Tris,

Tobias told me they scattered your ashes on the zipline where the Dauntless went to test their courage. You both went up there together; they decided that that's what should be done. I let them decide for you what would be best, because I know that Tobias was the most important person in the world to you, far more than me. I'm glad that they chose what they did because I'm sure you would have loved it.

Even though I'm your only surviving family member, it's not my place.

**3 years, 9 months.**

Tris,

I don't know how much you want to know about this, but we've had some major breakthroughs in agriculture here. I'm sure the details would bore you, but the point of it all is that we've managed to make things much more productive. Hopefully, this'll mean that when everything gets put to rights, that no-one has to live like the factionless or the people on the fringe again.

It's selfish, but more than that, I hope this pays just a tiny bit of my debt.

**4 years, 1 month.**

Tris,

I heard that Tobias went out on a date with Christina. I don't know if he'll be happy with her. But I'm sure that you'd have wanted him to be happy without you, because I know you're not selfish, Tris.

**5 years, 2 months.**

Tris,

I hear that it didn't work out between Tobias and Christina, that despite her liking for him, he just believes it's too soon, even now.

Just thought you should know.


	6. 6 years 3 months - 10 year 1 month

**6 years, 3 months.**

Tris,

I met someone. We're together now. I think she's the only person in the world that doesn't hate me for having the surname 'Prior'. Her name's Martha. You would have liked her, I think. She wasn't a faction member, but one of the new members of Chicago from the fringe. I'm sure that she would have been Dauntless, though, like you.

At first I didn't tell her who I was. It's my natural cowardice that comes through again, because finally I get to meet someone I don't want to lose, but I couldn't even tell them who I _really_ am. I'm ashamed, Tris, that's what I feel more than anything else right now, because I don't deserve the Prior name.

One day it all comes out. _I lied to you. I'm sorry. My first name is Caleb_ – that alone for her hadn't made the connection, it's been a long time, and I was never the focus of your story – _but my surname is Prior. _Prior told her everything. The most surprising thing to me is that she didn't care. I explained it to her, my cowardice and my shame, the fact that in my life, I feel like I can't even get that one thing right. She smiled and told me that _this_ was right. I really hope for once that that's true.

**7 years, 0 months.**

Tris,

I wanted to tell you about Tobias. He ran for the local election for what was formerly the Dauntless sector. He won – and by some margin, too. I would have voted for him, but it's not my constituency. I'm sure he'll do a great job, but I'll never see that for myself.

**8 years, 8 months.**

Tris,

I wanted to let you know that I'm okay with the fact that you never let me play the hero. That's never been who I am. The truth is, Tris, I'm a coward and I always have been. I wasn't designed for a faction like Dauntless.

I've let it go, Tris. I know how it sounds, but after what you've done, I felt like I needed to forgive you.

**10 years, 1 month.**

Tris,

She's pregnant now. Tris, you're going to be an aunt… We've been to the hospital, it's a girl.

I should tell you this. We discussed what to call her. I sat there, stared at the wall, my feet, anything.

She says it.

"Beatrice," The name rings in my ears. I haven't heard it said aloud for a very long time.

I shake my head. "It's…not what she would have wanted."

"Are you sure?" she says.

I nod my head.

"What do you think we should call her, then?" she asks me.

I don't want a name from my past, and, I don't think, neither would you.

I don't know what her name will be yet, but I'm sure that she will bear the Prior name with pride, just as you did.


	7. Epilogue: 60 years 11 months

**60 years, 11 months.**

Tris,

I wanted to let you know that this is the last thing I'll ever write to you. Right now I'm very ill and there's little that doctors or anyone else can do for me. So soon I won't need to write, because I'll be with you, wherever you are. The Abnegation way taught me the ideas of religion and that there is a loving God; the Erudite way taught me the ideas of science and that there is no God above us. I used to believe in the Erudite way, but now I'm not so sure who is right about this. I can't help that hope there's something, so you had the chance to live a full life somewhere, even if it wasn't here.

I have spent much of my adult life thinking of the themes of religion – the concept of debt and redemption. My whole adult life has been lived in the shadow of debt and the fact that I was never able to achieve my redemption. I accepted a long time ago that I would never get my redemption through the manner of my death; instead, I could only try and achieve it through the way that I live my life. All that I can offer you is my achievements in my field – the overseeing of the production of better and more efficient fertiliser – and what has happened in my personal life – my two beautiful daughters, Dana and Louise.

I tried to make no judgement about whether or not, in the grand scheme of things, your sacrifice was 'worth it'. To me, I'm not sure my life can ever be worth the price. But to you, maybe it can be.

With love,

Caleb.

~fin~


End file.
